Teaching as Inquiry: Writing

20 November 2015 Teaching as Inquiry: Writing

This year, I have been working on the following goals for 8 'at risk' Grade 3 & 4 writers. All are currently working toward the curriculum standard for their year.


Our goals:

• Say and write 6+ sentences in one session

• Correctly form all lower case letters

• Spell Essential Lists 1, 2 and, if ready, List 3

• Improve engagement in writing

Results for Term 4

THESE RESULTS ARE FOR 6 CHILDREN. One child refused to complete assessments (behaviour). Another child has significant literacy difficulties, who has been referred to an Resource Teacher Literacy (RTLit) for further support.

Children show:

* Increased or maintained correct number of essential spelling words

* All students forming 25 to 26 alphabet letters correctly
* All students have improved the length of their work, and now write 5-12 sentences
* For the child under RT Lit support, he has shown improved engagement, story length, and now includes simple punctuation (full-stop, spaces).
*Letter formation has improved for all students, with most achieving 25 or 26/26 correct.

What strategies have helped?

• Students reported working with parent helpers has motivated them in learning

• Varied tasks and stimulus

• Working with a small group and teacher or teacher aide daily. Lots of verbal encouragement and discussion of ideas occurs with the teacher / teacher aide.

• Sharing feedback with home, and individualised home work programmes

• Daily phonics instruction - to improve spelling. Phonics data shows all target children progressed

• Peer share / response time

• Clear WALTs and exemplars, unpacked with students

What Next - recommendations for next year's target students

• Discuss student progress and strategies more regularly (fortnightly?) with team

• Continue to experiment with iPad apps and share these with other staff

• Utilise peer support/tuakana-teina for writing (e.g. once a week)

• Continue utilising parent help in class

• Utilising strategies from Resource Teacher (Literacy) for two referred students

• Allow MORE time for phonics and explicitly related phonic activities on focus sounds, e.g., tch wordfinds, I-have-who-has games

What were the positive benefits about blogging my teaching as inquiry?	Blogging my teaching as inquiry allow me to specifically identify effective strategies, and plan next steps. It also allowed me to notice and celebrate student success, and share this individually with each child. My TAI also allowed me to identify students showing who were not targets initially, but had similar barriers to writing (for example, illegible handwriting but able to plan and create a description to a high standard). I could then include these children in my inquiry, and use the same strategies to assist them.
What were the challenges or barriers about blogging my teaching as inquiry?	I found it difficult to capture data/assessment and show this in a reader-friendly way. I also found some of the ICT aspects of blogging and layout difficult. I would like to work with a colleague on these areas in future.
What are your next steps about blogging your teaching as inquiry?	· Share blogs with team, and comment regularly on team members' blogs · Share data more regularly and plan next steps with the team. Perhaps as a separate meeting with one colleague to ensure efficiency? · Work on layout

Results as at Term 3, Week 7, 2015

*Half of the students are correctly spelling 29 or 30/30 of Essential Lists 1 and 2
The other half have improved from their last result
*All students have improved the length of their work, and now write 5-12 sentences

What strategies have helped?

• Students reported working with parent helpers has motivated them in learning

• For two children, using predictive text writers (iPad) has improved engagement, efficiency and story length

• Stimulus - varied, changing photos and sentence starters (e.g. If I won a million dollars)

• One to one teacher feedback and prompting

• Teacher questioning...asking the students 'what helped you?' and 'what do you notice about your work now compared to an earlier' and looking at student samples with them

• Daily handwriting for first 5 mins of sessions - this has especially helped letter formation

• Having short, sharp writing sessions accompanied by other tasks (word work, reading)

• Clear WALTs and exemplars, unpacked with students

• Phonics sessions (Yolanda Soryl, informed by assessment of student needs)

• Celebrating student success - photos of students writing, published work o display

• Continue to experiment with iPad apps and share these with other staff. Ask staff for their suggestions for useful writing apps

• Celebrate student success

What Next ?

• How can I utilise peer support/tuakana-teina to support students?

• Continue utilising parent help in class

• Utilising strategies from Resource Teacher (Literacy) for two referred students

• Start to include phonics assessment (Yolanda Soryl) in my assessment - are students becoming more able to use correct phonetic chunks and sounds?

Results at 29 June 2015   
3 students - now writing over 6 sentences with adjectives, verbs and capital/fullstop for half of writing. All of these children enjoy writing and report being 'happy' or 'excited'. Letter formation approx 24/26 correct.

* What strategies can I use for the two highly at risk children? - Ideas- See Resource Teacher Literacy? Apps on iPads? Other programmes or resources?
* What can I do to extend those who are close to meeting the goals we set?

All children working on Level 2 spelling.
7/9 children reluctant, lacking confidence or take a lot of prompting at the start of writing sessions